SCHOOLS 



another deed ' between land of Jordan Fantasma and land which belongs 

 to Rainer the clerk (clerici) at a rent of 2s. for all service to Mr. John 

 Judicalis' (the Jekyll of the trial), points to the school having been in 

 the same place in the days of Bishop Henry de Blois as in those of 

 Bishops William of Wykeham and William Wayneflete. In a roll * of 

 Richard II. 's reign, among the city records, being a list of rates levied 

 for the maintenance of the city walls, this school is called the High 

 School (a/fa sco/a), and the master of it is mentioned among 'The 

 Tenants of the Prior of St. Swithun's,' the cathedral monastery. This 

 school was not however what is commonly meant by the Priory School. 

 Though the school-house was on cathedral land it was outside the cathe- 

 dral precincts. The mastership was in the appointment of the bishop, 

 not the prior ; the master was a secular clerk, not a monk, and the 

 name of the school was not the Priory School but the High School or 

 Grammar School or Great Grammar School of the city of Winchester. 



It must have been well frequented by the citizens. In a great suit 2 

 which took place in 1373 between William of Wykeham and three 

 masters of St. Cross, who were charged with malversation and breach of 

 trust, twenty-eight witnesses were produced and examined before the 

 abbot of Hyde, sitting, as an Official Examiner of the High Court does 

 now, to take the depositions of witnesses in the case. Of these twenty- 

 eight, half were laymen, of whom eleven are described as litterates, i.e. 

 learned in Latin, who must have got their learning for the most part in 

 the City Grammar School. The first witness, Walter of Sevenhampton, 

 rector of Middlemarsh and prebendary of Romsey, who had been six 

 years steward of the hospital, gave evidence that every day in the hos- 

 pital of St. Cross one hundred poor were given dinner in the ' Hundred- 

 menne Hall ' ; a loaf of coarse bread weighing 5 marks, 3 quarts of 

 weak beer, pottage enough, and a herring and two pilchards, or two eggs 

 and a farthing's worth of cheese. Among them were ' thirteen poor 

 scholars of the Grammar School, sent there by the Master of the High 

 Grammar School of the City of Winchester' (magistrum summe scale 

 gramaticalis cmitatis Wyntori). 



The next witness, Robert Frere, himself a brother of the hospital, 

 eighty years old, corroborated Sevenhampton, adding that there was a 

 cook called ' Hundred-men-coke,' who cooked for the poor men's 

 dinner pottage in a great pot called the ' Hundred-men-pot,' and a great 

 spoon was kept to ladle pottage from the pot called ' Hundred-men- 

 ladel.' This witness speaks of the thirteen poor scholars simply from 

 ' the school of the city.' Both he and the next witness, Adam Jacob, 

 clerk, also upwards of eighty years old, born by the gate of the hospital 

 and sacristan there for thirty years, spoke * to the thirteen poor 

 scholars from the Grammar School (a scolis gramaticalibus) named by 

 the master of this Grammar School (sco/e gramaticalis), as being sent 



1 Regula Muragii, now kept in the Mayor's parlour. 



8 MS. in possession of the warden of New College, beginning on f. 2, 'Processus delegationis inter 

 Episcopum Wyntoniensem et Custodem Hospi tails,' 41. 3 Ibid. f. 29. 



255 



